Many of you will now say "so what". The content and the offering is important. And, you are of course right about that. I usually go to the individual vendor representative (thanks to all, who showed me around and discussed new products / services) and ask about the new INNOVATIONS. And while I am generally excited about everything that is new in diagnostic imaging, I am particularly interested in image guided surgeries and easy and less expensive solutions to clinical and technical problems.

In that respect I was a little disappointed, maybe with the exception of the new MULTITOM RAX from SIEMENS, that has XR tube and Detector on individual ceiling mounted arms that can move inside the Rad room in all kinds of distances and angles to each other and with that can even create 3D XR images of a standing patient. GE, as well as SIEMENS (and probably PHILIPS too) were heavily promoting integrated software solutions that connect all systems, allow for remote downloading of imaging protocols, management of resources, and bookkeeping of time and materials spend.


Clearly, radiology operations and system management will be of utmost importance in the future and could very much benefit from these offerings. In the last years the innovation focus has been more and more on the software for imaging manipulation / handling / fusion and now additionally on the people and systems management side as well as on image / report distribution. Efficiency boosters with the imaging systems as enablers. The major vendors are trying to get even more prominent in the imaging practices, diagnostic departments, and hospitals / healthcare providers. I think that this strategy is a smart move, but that will also increase the users dependency on that one vendor and increase the switching cost to another vendor.

What else? SAMSUNG showed their own 128 slice CT (NExCT 7), with quite a small footprint and an appealing design. I also liked the new PET/CT of PHILIPS, size reduced and with significantly improved image quality.

TOSHIBA presented a combined CT / FLAT PANEL ANGIO because some of their customers apparently "... move their patients a lot between imaging and intervention." I am not sure that I can follow that and while I always think that it is cool to combine imaging modalities I have a hard time believing that there will be too many customers actually buying this system for the reasons mentioned. So, don't get me wrong ... that is cool, but possibly overkill ... and I have also been wrong quite often in the past with my predictions!

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